As it says in Chis's link, it is not a direct ancestor of man (if it is real), but rather one of the links before the apes.
The reasons it is special is because it has opposing thumbs (on its feet), eyes which overlap - giving 3D vision, shorter arms - like a human, and a bone - the tarsis in the heel of the foot which is apparently a precursor of bipeds.
It's way - way back and in no way a link from apes/monkeys, to homo sapien. (But probably similar to Rath in its evolutionary development).
It makes me wonder what happened to cro-magnon bloke. With 1400 cc of brain he had more grey matter than modern humans, but he got off the bus some millions of years ago and that was his lott.
- Me suspects that with advancement of the brain and particularly the neo-cortex comes a conscience which puts the owner of such at a distinct disadvantage when faced with lesser evolved bipeds. Y'see the most advanced will naturally be inclined to accept as equals other bipeds such as those they might subjugate or otherwise allow to live amongst them. It'll work for a time, but once the lesser-evolved have multiplied in numbers greater than the advanced ones had expected or anticipated they tend to form a pack and sytematically kill every one of the kind which is more advanced (competitive).
Such as what probably happened in the Americas, where the oldest human remains are of caucasians, but they just vanished. The descendants of the peoples who (probably) ate them still recite ancient tales of the White people who gave them their civilisations and how they were all killed.
Or New Zealand is another interesting case, where it has been established that the males hail from Black Africans and the women are descended from Asia. What occured there seems to indicate that the Asians had transported some Blacks to NZ, and the Asians were a ruling class. But at some point the Blacks overpowered their Asian handlers, killed the men and took the women for themselves.
History repeats itself all right.










